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900 customers affected by Dundurn power outage By Joel van der Veen DUNDURN—About 900 SaskPower subscribers in Dundurn and the surrounding area were without electricity for a couple of hours on Monday morning after a gravel truck hit a power pole. The incident took place just after 7 a.m. on Jan. 16, knocking out power to a region that included nearby Blackstrap Provincial Park and some businesses along Highway 11 as far south as Hanley. Shawn Silzer, a media relations representative for SaskPower, said a crew was sent out to Dundurn shortly after the incident was reported. Most customers had their service restored between 9 and 9:30 a.m., while the last three subscribers were reconnected around 9:50 a.m. Dundurn town administrator Michelle Roepe said that landline telephones continued working normally. She said the town was preparing to open the community hall, where residents could stay until the power was reconnected. "We have a generator that we can hook up," she said. "We were just about to, and then the power came on." Roepe said the town's emergency procedures dictate at which point the community hall would be opened in the event of a power failure, based on how long the power is out and how low the temperature is. For instance, if the power was out for more than two hours at -20˚ C, the hall would be opened. If the temperature was down to -30˚ C, the town would open the hall after an hour and a half. While the entire town was affected, as well as a significant number of nearby acreages, Roepe said it was fortunate the outage didn't continue for more than a couple of hours. "We were lucky," she said. Darice Carlson, administrator for the Town of Hanley, said that most of that community was not affected since they are on a separate power grid. However, a small number of businesses along Highway 11 were without power since they share the power grid with Dundurn. Bev Goff, who runs TrailBreak Services with her husband Cam, said the outage was somewhat of an inconvenience for them since customers couldn't pump gas without electricity. "We couldn't get the store up and running, basically," she said. "And it was dark." The leaderonline is a division of The Davidson Leader, Davidson, Saskatchewan, Canada. |